


Release

by starfishchick, thesaddestboner



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M, New York Yankees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-05
Updated: 2008-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfishchick/pseuds/starfishchick, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/pseuds/thesaddestboner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There's no champagne tonight, but they knew it had been there, ordered and on ice every night since game three. Derek guesses that Mr. Steinbrenner will be drinking it on New Year's Eve, or maybe they'll just save it until next year.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Release

**Author's Note:**

> [**starfishchick**](http://starfishchick.livejournal.com/) and I started fic-tagging this back after the end of the 2004 ALCS and finished it sometime in 2005. I just found it in my Crap I’ll Never Finish folder and figured, “What the hell, why not post it?” :P I edited to the best of my ability, but obviously I might have missed some things. All remaining mistakes (and the lame title) are mine.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thesaddestboner) and [tumblr](http://saddestboner.tumblr.com).

There's no champagne tonight, but they knew it had been there, ordered and on ice every night since game three. Derek guesses that Mr. Steinbrenner will be drinking it on New Year's Eve, or maybe they'll just save it until next year.

There's no champagne, but that doesn't mean they're not drinking. Everyone's got beer, and someone's produced a bottle of 151 proof rum that was brought back from a trip to the West Indies.

"Don't drink it straight," cautions Heredia, but no one is listening to him.

Jorge is on the phone with his wife, asking her to change the date of their flight home. Derek, strangely calm, is trying to keep Brownie from apologizing again. Derek has found his cliches: "Not your fault, not our year, nothing you could do," but he knows it's bullshit. 

Of course there was something they could have done. Win. And it's everyone's fault. It was a collective loss, a team fuck-up, and he knows everyone in the room feels like there was one pitch, one play, one at-bat that could have made this night—or any of the nights before—a night of celebration instead of a bunch of drunken ballplayers mourning the death of their season.

No one has left. No one wants to leave. Leaving means facing the press and the fans and the world. Leaving means admitting that it's over, and no one wants to do that.

Out of all the players, Alex is quietest of all, sitting on a small wood stool in front of his locker, regarding everything with a blank gaze. Shoulders slumped, tearing tape off his wrists, avoiding looking anyone directly in their eyes.

Derek doesn't like the annihilated look in Alex's eyes, and he pulls up a stool beside him. "It'll be okay."

Alex shrugs, lifts off his ballcap and rubs a hand over his forehead, letting the hat drop to the ground. "I shouldn't have done that. If I hadn't done that, we might have won."

Derek pushes the bottle of rum into Alex's hands. "Just forget about it," and he gives Alex a pat on the back before getting up to leave. "We should have won game four, and then none of this would've happened."

Alex fumbles with the cap of the bottle before twisting it off, bringing the bottle of rum to his lips. "Better said than done," he mutters.

Heredia says, "Don't drink it straight, it'll fuck you up," and is pushing an open can of Coke at him, but right now, Alex doesn't care.

The rum burns and it's all he can do to choke it down. He swallows hard and feels tears prickling at the backs of his eyes. He doesn't want to cry. It's not like he'd be the only one; no one would admit to it, but they've all shed a tear of frustration from time to time. But Alex doesn't want to cry. That's the passive reaction, and he's always been proactive. Hence the base-running play that no one's ever going to forget, no matter what Derek says. 

Derek has a World Series ring, almost a whole handful of them, in fact, and Alex wants to take a bat and smash his locker to bits, then going over to the visitor's locker room and pound a few heads together. 

Instead, he takes another swallow of rum. It's still painful, but it's a bit smoother this time and he thinks that Heredia must be a real lightweight to worry about drinking this stuff straight. He stands up to tell him so, and the room blurs just a little, and suddenly Derek is there, pushing him down onto the wooden stool, blocking him from the others' view, grabbing the rum back and shoving a Corona into his hand instead.

"Don't do it," he cautions, and Alex wonders how Derek knew what he was thinking.

The bottle of beer is slippery and wet in his hand, and cool. Derek hands him a bottle opener and Alex pauses to wonder what Derek was doing with it in his locker before ripping the cap off the Corona and welcoming the distraction.

Derek feels the tension in Alex's muscles, under his hand, and he gives his back a rub. "Loosen up a little Alex. You look like you're going to rip someone's head off."

Alex turns his eyes on Derek and arches one eyebrow, as if to challenge the shortstop, a 'Wanna try me?' gesture if ever Derek Jeter saw one.

Derek is tempted for a few seconds to respond to the challenge. Although he knows he'd never do it, he weighs the odds of a fight between them, pitting their six-foot-three frames against each other. He wonders how much effect Alex's 15 extra pounds would have, then decides that the visual his brain has produced isn't appropriate for the locker room.

"So I'm right? You want to take someone on? Show them who's boss?"

Behind the slightly intoxicated glaze - this Corona is clearly not the first one he's practically inhaled, Derek thinks, Alex's eyes light up, but Derek is quick to put a steady hand on his shoulder and keep him seated. 

"Better not. Your reputation is tarnished enough already right now - a brawl in the locker room after losing the series isn't going to help."

"Fuck my reputation, man," Alex slurs, waving his hand in the air at something that only he can see. "Don't give a fuck 'bout my reputation. Reputations are _shit_ , man."

Derek rolls his eyes and slips an arm around Alex's shoulders, smirking. "So, how many of those have you had since the game ended?" he teases, fuzzing a hand through Alex's hair.

Alex squirms out of his arms, raising the beer bottle in his hand in an obscene toast. "Here's to the New York Yankees! Champions of the—of the monumental choke!" 

Derek reaches out and slides his hand over Alex's, pushing it down. "Maybe I should take you home now?" Derek asks, hiking an eyebrow at his friend, licking the corner of his mouth for some nonexistant crumb.

Alex squinches his eyes shut, pulling his mouth into a grimace. "I feel sick, Derek. I think I'm going to throw up."

"I can see why," Derek nods along, putting his arm around Alex's waist, letting his hand rest curved over Alex's hipbone for a fraction of a second too long.

Alex swats Derek's hand away, mumbling into Derek's ear, his lips grazing over his temple, "I am going to throw up," and stumbling off to the bathroom.

Jorge nudges Derek with his shoulder and smirks, "Guy can't hold his liquor." 

Derek regards Posada with a short nod. "I should go in and see if he's okay . . ."

"Not like he'll fall in or something," Jorge snickers, hiding it behind his hand, "or, on second thought, maybe you _should_ go in and check on him. He's been inhaling Coronas since we got back to the clubhouse."

"Can't blame him," Derek says. "He thought we were gonna . . . he really thought this year was the year."

"Derek," says Jorge, "we all did."

If this were a movie, this would be a poignant moment, showing the Realization of a Deeper Understanding between these two characters that would Mean Something for the rest of their lives. But this isn't a movie, and Derek's only response to this comment of Jorge's is to take one last swallow of rum and hand the bottle to the catcher.

"Don't let Alex get a hold of that again," he warns. "The last thing we need is our heartbroken billionaire star player showing up at the ER with alcohol poisoning." He tries to laugh, but it's not much of a laughing matter.

Jorge nods. "Look after him. This is harder on him than on the rest of us. And it's going to be harder when he sobers up and realizes that it's not a nightmare." And he heads back into the crowd gathering around Moose's locker.

Derek walks down the hallway to the can, and knocks on the door.

"How you doing in there, champ?" he calls.

Not receiving an adequate response, Derek steps into the bathroom and peers under the first bathroom stall door he comes to. "Alex," he calls out, creeping along the row of stalls, "wanna talk or something?"

"Go _away_." Rodriguez is in the handicapped stall, clinging to the metal railing, his lips wet and his eyes hazed over with a foggy, not-all-the-way-there look.

Derek moves closer, taking cautious steps like an elephant walking on eggshells. "C'mon, man," he says, "it's gonna be all right."

"Damn it, Derek, it's _not_ going to be all right, okay?" Alex gets to his feet, throwing out an arm when his balance goes askew.

Derek grabs onto his wrist, steadies him. "Trust me, I've been through this before. It'll get easier with time, and then before you know it, bam, it's Spring Training and a new season."

Alex scoffs, shaking his head, his eyes glassy. "You're not even listening to me, are you, Derek? You're not even fucking _listening_ to me."

"Well, if you've got something to say, why don't you just come out and say it?" Derek straightens his shoulders, squares them and sticks out his chest, hands on his hips. Levels a hard glare in Rodriguez's direction, lets him know what's what.

Alex shifts his gaze downward, focusing in on a tiny crack in one of the tiles. "You wouldn't get it anyway," he mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Try me."

"It hurts."

"I know," says Derek.

"No, you don't. You don't know, and you can't fucking know!"

Alex launches himself across the stall, motioning wildly, and Derek puts his hands up to defend himself. His reflexes are dulled—more than slightly—by the rum and the beers, but they're still there. He's got great instincts.

He doesn't think Alex would hit him, but with the amount of alcohol in his system, who knows what he's capable of. Alex staggers, or Derek thinks he does, and the result of this is when their bodies collide, Derek's got his arms wrapped around Alex. This is surprising enough, but when Alex's cold lips meet his, Derek wonders how his instincts missed that one coming.

The first thought that registers is surprise that Alex doesn't taste like grape Kool-Aid. He always assumed that the lucky purple lip gloss—Chapstick, Alex always insists—had a flavour.

His second thought is to wonder what took Alex so long. It's not uncommon for players to hook up for a season. It's not love or romance, and few think it is. It's companionship, mostly, and the occasional rough handjob in the sauna after a tough loss or a bad game. It's safer than the groupies, and brings a team together. Keeps everything in the family, so to speak.

His third thought is that he's he's standing there thinking while Alex is kissing him in the bathroom of Yankee Stadium. And the season is over.

Derek pulls away. "You're drunk."

Alex looks dazed. "I am."

Derek meets Alex's gaze. "How drunk are you?"

Akex shifts his gaze downward, still holding on to Derek by the waist of his pants. "Drunk enough?" he asks, clutching to Derek's shirt now, unsteady. Alex bumps his knee against Derek's, and they fall back.

Derek hits his head against the tile and winces, squeezing onto Alex's elbow. "Jeeze, Alex, maybe you need someone to take you home, huh?" 

Alex is shaking his head and licking his lips. "I can hail a cab or somethin'."

"Right." Derek puts his arm around Alex's hips and pulls him closer. "I'll take you home."

Alex's eyes are a little clearer, like glass that's been wiped down with Windex. "Hm, okay. Take me home." 

He fits so nicely against Derek's side, that for a second—and a few more drinks—Derek could pretend that Alex is one of his girls. Derek's not really sure what Alex means by 'Take me home.' Probably he means just that. The chances of him meaning anything other than 'Take me home and don't let me do anything violent and or stupid' are pretty slim.

Derek unwraps his arm from Alex's hips and puts it around his shoulders, and puts one of Alex's arms around his waist. "Let's go," he says, guiding his drunken teammate down the hall.

They head back out into the locker room, where the rest of the team is beginning to straggle out.

Jorge raises an eyebrow at Derek as he and Alex walk-stagger into the room. "You taking care of him?" he asks.

Derek nods curtly. "He wants to go home."

Jorge nods and waves, turning his attention back to Mussina who is still slumped in front of his locker.

Derek snags the half-full bottle of rum on his way by. Alex might be drunk enough, but he's not sure he is.

Because maybe when Alex says 'Take me home' it means something else—something more.

*

The drive to Alex's place is quiet and relatively uneventful, with Alex closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the cool window for most of the ride.

Every so often, when they come to red lights, Derek pauses to look over at Alex, his face cast in an eerie blue-white glow from the streetlights, and with his eyes closed and his lips parted slightly, he almost looks dead.

*

Derek pauses in the doorway under the porch light, while Alex fumbles his keys out of his pants pocket, his hands shaking. 

"Are you all right? Do you want me to do it for you?" Derek puts a hand on Alex's shoulder blade, but Rodriguez twists away.

"Don't touch me. I've got it," he grumbles, lips sticking together and the inside of his mouth dry and cottony. He finds the right key and slides it home, the hiss and the click of the lock unlatching sounding so loud in Derek's ears.

" 'kay." Derek follows Alex into his place and shuts the door behind them. 

Alex drops his coat on the rack and rubs a hand over his stomach, eyes coming to rest on the bottle of rum in Derek's hand. "What'd you bring that for?" he asks, hiking an eyebrow. "Did you think we'd continue the party in my bedroom?"

Derek freezes, unsure of what to do or say. Alex makes his way to the living room, drops heavily to the sofa and tilts his head back, breating deeply. 

Derek, still standing by the door, coat on, shakes his head, disbelieving. "What the fuck, man? I left early, and sober— _mostly_ sober," he amends, "to drive your drunken ass home." He thinks, but does not say, _And you kissed me and asked me to take you home, so what was I supposed to think?_ "So now I'm mostly sober, not going to the World Series, and getting bitched at by you? I don't think so." He points the hand with the bottle in it at the back of Alex's head. "I'm getting drunk with or without you, and it has nothing to do with your bedroom. Okay?"

The silence stretches between them, and Derek wonders if Alex has passed out. His hand is searching for the knob behind him when Alex speaks.

"Yeah, Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, you're getting drunk." He attempts to stand up, but doesn't get far, and sinks further into the sofa cushions. A hand waves Derek toward the kitchen just off the front hall. "There are glasses in there."

When Derek returns, Alex really is asleep. Or is, until Derek puts two glasses, a can of Coke and the rum down onto the coffee table and drops into the leather recliner. At the thunk of glass-on-wood, Alex's eyes open slightly.

Derek pours himself a couple of inches of rum and fills the rest of the glass with Coke. "Nice place you've got here."

Alex smiles, twisting up the corners of his lips, like the rest of his mouth isn't working quite well enough to give a full smile. "Thanks. Cynthia designed most of it. Not much to do when you're on maternity leave, eh?"

Derek cringes at _Cynthia_ and wonders if she's around. "She here?"

"Nah. She's in Miami, visiting my mom," Alex says, waving his hand in the air. "They're going baby shopping."

Derek nods, sipping the rum-and-Coke, sliding the other glass toward Alex. "Oh. That's nice." He stares at a spot on the wall, a black smudge that could be a shoe mark, and wonders. 

After a few minutes of silence, Alex raises his voice, snapping Derek out of his trance-like reverie. "I said _Will you pour me a rum and Coke too or are you going to stare at the wall all night_?"

Derek looks at Alex, blinks. "Oh, sorry." He makes up a glass for Alex and pushes it into his hand, closing his fingers around it. He lets his fingertips linger a fraction of a second longer than normal.

Alex sips his rum and Coke in silence, and Derek lets his mind wander again. He remembers Alex's mouth on his—the first time—and touches his thumb to his lips.

"Jeeze, man, you're freaking me out." Alex thumps his empty glass on the coffee table, regarding him with a lazy half-nod, hiking an eyebrow.

Derek sighs, and sets his empty glass beside Alex's. "You're drunker than I thought. You should go sleep this off."

Alex grins. "You going to tuck me in?"

"Fuck off." Derek struggles to extract himself from the deep leather chair. It's difficult to go on a tirade when you've sitting in a recliner with your feet up. "You listen to me, you fucking dramaqueen!"

"Derek, fuck, I'm just—"

"No!" The gloves are off now. "Your bonehead play might have cost us the series, and I was trying to make you feel better. Either tell me to go home or stop being a fucking cocktease, because there are plenty of people I could be with right now without any of this passive-aggressive bullshit!"

Alex says nothing.

"I'm just about out of patience with you tonight. You yell at me, kiss me, and ask me to take you home, and when I do, you can only talk to me about your wife and baby shopping. What am I supposed to think?"

Alex is quiet for a white, digesting Derek's little tirade, and Derek imagines the gears in Alex’s head spinning as he struggles to come up with an adequate response. 

"Well, am I totally off base here?" Derek is impatient, tapping his foot on the hardwood floor, hands on his hips. _Tap-tap-tap._

"I'm tired and I'm drunk. Can we save this for later? I'll make it up to you," Alex whines, trying to find an excuse—any excuse, really—to get out of this mess he's gotten them into.

"I think you should be honest with me," Derek says, eyes flashing. "Starting now."

Alex opens and closes his mouth a few times, exhaling, but not saying anything. He looks supremely uncomfortable, but Derek is past caring.

"I just thought, I thought that you—" Alex stops.

Derek waits.

"I thought that you would understand. About the series, about . . . everything."

"I do," replies Derek. "At least I thought I did."

Alex takes a deep breath. "And I thought you would kiss me back! But you just stood there."

Derek can't help it—he laughs. "Of course I just stood there! When you're drunk and have just lost your chance for the World Series and your third baseman kisses you in a bathroom in Yankee Stadium, your first reaction is to stand there! What did you think, you would kiss me and I would take you right there, bent over the bathroom counter?"

The question hangs in the air. Derek is about to kick himself for putting the thought into words, when Alex speaks.

"Well," Alex says as his cheeks flush slightly, "maybe."

Derek strides forward and hooks his arm around Alex's waist, and without thinking much at all about the consequences, slides his mouth over his teammate's.

Alex resists for a second, putting his hand against Derek's shoulder and pushing, but it doesn't last long, and he welcomes Derek's boldness with an eager tongue.

Derek somehow manages to maneuver Alex back to the couch, hands roaming Rodriguez's body, squirreling under his shirt, his fingertips hard on Alex's chest.

Alex turns his head to the side, and Derek ends up sucking on his throat. "Derek."

"What?" He's slipping a hand down Alex's chest, kissing with the urgency of a terminally ill man.

"Are you. Are you sure you wanna . . . ?" Alex closes his eyes and Derek moves away from his neck.

"Yeah. You sure you wanna?" Derek slides a sly glance in Alex's direction out of the corners of his eyes. Alex is laying on his back, legs sprawled out and his arms at his sides, hanging limp like he's had the air sucked out of him.

Which he had. 

Alex tries to say, "Yeah," but it gets stuck in his throat, and then Derek is kissing him again and that's all the answer they really need.

The couch is wide and deep, and their bodies fit on it with no difficulty, once they get their legs organized. They may be drunk, but it isn't long before Derek can feel Alex's erection grow hard against his thigh.

Derek disentangles a hand from Alex's shirt and props himself up, adjusting his position. When he lowers himself back down to lie chest to chest with Alex, their cocks are aligned.

This seems to energize Alex, and he groans, pushing his hips up into Derek's, and— _finally_ , Derek thinks—kissing him back with a degree of urgency. 

If Alex's reaction is a little slowed by the alcohol— _please let it be by the alcohol_ —Derek doesn't mind. He's there now. 

Their breathing is more than a bit erratic and the friction is becoming almost painful when Derek props himself up again, pressing the length of his aching cock even harder into Alex's, and reaches for his belt buckle.

Alex contours his palms to Derek's chest, close enough to feel Derek's heartbeat through his hands, feeling his breath against his throat. Alex pushes back, pushes Derek away. "Wait, Derek, stop."

Derek pauses, his hands resting on Alex's hips, and sighs. "What is it?" 

"I think I'm going to throw up."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Derek sits back, trying to play it off cool and easy, when really, he wants to rip Alex's clothes off and take him right there on the couch. _Self-restraint_ , thinks Derek, _is underrated_.

"I think I drank too mu—I think I had too much to drink," Alex groans, pressing his hands over his face.

"Well, duh." Derek glances at the half-empty bottle of rum and the glasses of melted ice and the cans of Coke. "Here, let me help you, Alex." He loops his arms around Alex's shoulders and helps him to his feet.

Alex pitches forward, and Derek has to use every muscle in his body—including a few he didn't even know existed—to keep Alex from falling face first into the rum and Cokes. 

"Lemme 'lone," Alex mumbles, pushing Derek awak. "I can do it m'self."

Derek tugs Alex toward the stairs, despite his protests. "Yeah, right."

"What y'gonna do?" Alex asks, hazy eyed, his eyelids heavy, and the corner of his mouth tugged-down and lazy. 

"Gonna put you in a cold shower," says Derek.

"Mmkay." Alex leans on Derek's side, and allows him to drag him up the stairs to his bedroom.

Derek closes the door behind them and locks it, even though Alex's hired help has gone home for the evening. Alex flops onto the bed and watches as Derek kneels beside him and begins to undo the top button of his pants.

"I can do _that_ m'self, too," says Alex, reaching for the button, but Derek bats his hands away. 

"You can barely walk, you idiot. Maybe you'd better let me take care of anything requiring coordination."

Alex seems to accept this logic, and allows Derek to strip him to his briefs. He's sweating the rum out, Derek can smell it in his pores, and he tries not to breathe too deeply as he helps Alex up and propels him toward the bathroom. 

The room is so big it has a bench. A bench so big it's practically a sofa. A small child could swim laps in the bathtub. "This is," he hesitates, searching for the right word, "nice, man."

"Well, you know, if you've got it . . ." Alex's voice trails off.

"Yeah, I know." And he does, he knows and understands, and his place is nothing to sneeze at, but _still_. Still. 

"Derek, I hafta piss."

"Well, I'm not going to hold your dick for you while you do that. Call me when you're done, and then we'll figure out the shower."

Derek waits outside the door, waiting for the call. After a few minutes, when no call is forthcoming, he taps on the door. 

"Alex?"

That this is the second time tonight he's been hanging around outside a bathroom waiting for this guy is not something he wants to think about.

There's no response, and Derek puts a hand to the doorknob, knocking one last time, thinking _well, you fucker, this is your own damn fault_ , and pushes the door open.

Alex is sitting on the edge of the tub, his back to Derek.

"Hey, Alex, you okay there?" Derek asks, lounging against the door frame. 

Silence.

"Did you fucking pass out or something?" Derek inches closer to Alex, and puts a hand on his back. Alex jerks upright and looks back at Derek, his face pulled into an annoyed scowl.

"I was _thinking_ , man," he says, still not quite sober.

"About what?" Derek rolls his eyes.

" 'bout stuff." Alex toys with the faucet, turning the water on, then off, then on, then off.

"Care to tell me about it?" Derek asks, his hand still on Alex's shoulder.

"Maybe." Alex turns the faucet on and drops his hand into his lap. Alex turns to look at Derek, wincing and rubbing his palm across his forehead. "You gotta do something for me though, man."

"What do you want?" Derek realizes that Alex is completely and totally nude, and fixes his gaze on the wall behind Alex's head.

Alex reaches out and tilts Derek's chin until they're eye-to-eye. "You gotta lemme, y'know."

"No, I don't," says Derek. 

"You _know_." Alex leans forward and kisses him again, and this time his lips are warm. An opened bottle of rum—not Heredia's, must have come from Alex's secret stash—is sitting on the windowsill.

And then Derek _does_ know. Or thinks he does. At least, the hand that's not holding his chin is reaching for his belt and that gives him an idea of the ballpark— _hey_ , thinks Derek, _ballpark_ —they're in.

"Are you sure you're—" he almost—almost—says 'up for it', but his brain stops his mouth just in time "—feeling okay? You don't have to."

"Want to. Want you to know I mean it. You're a good guy, you know, a good. Person." Alex breaks eye contact and his gaze shifts around the room. "People say I'm selfish. I _am_ selfish. But that doesn't mean I can't . . ." His voice trails off. "I'd like to do something for you, that's all."

The fact that Alex is capable of feeling gratitude, or of acknowledging that he's a selfish little fucker, is almost as surprising as what Derek is pretty sure is the offer of a blowjob.

And with the night they've had, there's no way he's going to turn that offer down.

Derek lets Alex lead him into the bedroom, which looks like it was ripped right out of the pages of a cheesy Harlequin romance novel. Alex has set up some candles on the nightstand, and Barry White is crooning from the stereo system. Derek smiles.

"Just lay down, let me do everything," Alex says, pushing Derek onto the bed.

Derek defers, and does as Alex tells him, laying back on the bed. Alex crawls on top of him and brushes his lips over Derek's forehead.

"Love you, Derek, love you," Alex says.

Derek smiles, but he can't say it back. He puts a hand on Alex's hip, pulls him closer. "I . . ." He pauses.

"It's okay, don't say anything." Alex's hands are between them, at Derek's waist, fiddling with the zipper and the button. 

Barry White skips a beat and there are large Alex-and-Derek shaped shadows on the wall.

Alex finally succeeds in unfastening the button of Derek's pants and tugs them off, impatiently, sliding his hand down Derek's chest. He kisses him again, and this time Derek kisses back, slipping his hand under Alex's shirt.

Scraping his teeth down Derek's neck, Alex begins to inch Derek's boxers down.

"Derek?" Alex is crouching in front of him, looking up at him curiously.

"Um, sorry, I was thinking." And now he wonders what the hell Alex said to him while he was imagining a porn movie in his brain. "I mean, I was thinking about _you_ , about—" _not_ us _, they're not an 'us', they're just two teammates looking for comfort after having their hearts broken_ "—this. Thing." He coughs. "This thing."

"This thing?" asks Alex, squeezing Derek's half-hard cock with one hand and pulling at his zipper with the other.

Derek grins. "I guess so."

Alex stands, slides the fingers of one hand under the waistband of Derek's pants, and tries to pull him towards the bedroom.

"No," says Derek, resisting, and then, when he sees Alex's face, shrugs. "Not in your wife's bed, man. That's not right." He indicates the huge fake fur mat by the tub. "Is here okay?"

"Wherever, anywhere you want," says Alex, leading the way, eager to please now that he knows he's not being rejected. "Just, please, let me, your pants, come on . . ."

And Derek, realizing that Alex is naked and has been for a while, shucks his pants and boxer-briefs to the floor, takes three steps to the floor mat, and reaches for Alex.

Later on in the evening, when they're in the guest room because Derek refuses to share Alex and Cynthia's marriage bed, sleeping off the post sex haze (or at least Alex is), Derek will think about things, about their situation, about the failed championship run, but right now, he's not doing any thinking. 

Derek curves his lips over a notch in Alex's spine, swirling his tongue, circling the bump at the base of his neck, roaming hands on his hips, and then his side, and then lower. 

Derek pushes Alex onto his back and raises his head, and the separation of his mouth from Alex's skin causes the third baseman to open one eye. 

"What'cha stopping for?" he asks, his voice tinged with impatient longing.

"Protection . . . You got it, right?" Derek says. 

"Oh, yeah." Alex pulls himself into a cross-legged position and grabs the package of brightly colored condoms off the toilet seat. "They come in different flavors. Red is cherry, blue is grape, and yellow is banana."

"Yellow is banana?" Derek snorts. 

"Yeah." Alex rips open one of the foil wrappers and fishes one out, moving to Derek, but he puts his hands on Alex's wrists.

"I'll do it myself," and he rolls the condom on, smoothing out the imperfections, the air bubbles, making sure everything is right, making sure that nothing can go wrong. 

"Come on. Come on." Alex was always in a hurry.

Derek lowers himself on top of Alex and kisses his neck, once, where it's as soft and smooth as a young boy's. Derek can almost smell grass and infield dirt on Alex’s damp skin.

Alex puts his hands on Derek's hips, bracing himself, because he hasn't done this in a while. Neither has Derek, but Alex never could tell with him.

There's plenty of lube and Derek takes it slow, prefacing any dick-related action with a finger, just to make sure Alex is really okay with this. One finger leads to two, and pretty soon Alex is panting and gasping "Come on, do it, do it, man."

Fingers out, dick in, and really, it's fine. It's not the best ever, but even mediocre sex is better than no sex at all, right? And it's not that it's _bad_ , it's that Derek is so . . . detached from it all. Like he's watching it happen to someone else. The orgasm, when it comes, pulls him harshly back to the reality of the moment, and as he collapses next to Alex, having tied off the condom and wiped himself off on the sheets, he realizes that the release has come from his brain as well as his cock.

And his brain knows that he's stupid to be here, stupid to be doing this. He turns to say this to Alex, but Alex is asleep. How he can sleep like that after the night they've had, the series they've had, the season they've had, Derek will never know. He won't sleep tonight, or for many nights to come. He'll replay the season in his mind, he'll watch the sun rise over his city, and he'll wait for next year. 

It's all he can do.

On his way out the door he looks back toward Alex, smiles. "See you next season."

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.


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